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"What exactly am I supposed to be doing?" I wondered.

"You're supposed to sit there and watch us make fudge," Yukinoshita ordered.

I sat in her living room with Yui and her in the kitchen. I twiddled my thumbs gently. I just twisted them around one another. I turned in the seat to see the two of them working in the kitchen.

I got up.

"Hikki!"

"Just a second."

I returned to my sitting position opposite where I had been sitting before so I could see them without turning my head. I reclined gently and sighed a little. They were both adorable in their little aprons.

"Much better," I decided.

"Fine," Yukinoshita allowed.

"Hikki you can cook can't you?" Yui asked me.

"I can cook meals. I used to for… for Komachi. I didn't bake sweets or anything."

"Hm," Yui hummed. The noise came from deep in her throat. I stared at the rosy skin for a moment before shaking it off. "I like boys who can cook. I like food."

I chuckled lightly at her. "You're a regular puppy dog."

"What's that mean?" She demanded.

"Only what I said. You're adorable. Plus you look good in that collar I got you. You're a puppy dog."

She wasn't wearing the collar at the moment. Her skin was rosy and clear.

Yukinoshita bobbed her head in agreeable fashion. "Dogs aren't really my cup of tea. But I make an exception in your case."

"You too Yukinon?!"

"What? He's right. You're a total puppy."

"Betrayal!" Yui pointed at her. "Don't take his side!"

Yukinoshita shrugged. She started mixing something sweet smelling which had a shitload of powdered sugar in it.

"How's today Hikigaya? Are you feeling better?" Yukinoshita asked me.

"Not really. I um…I'm…" I stammered off when I started thinking about it. I tried to shake it off but there were ghostly hands on me. It didn't help. Yukinoshita nodded a little again. It was pitying. I didn't like it. I didn't want to be pitied. I looked away when Yui glanced at me with long eyes.

I sighed heavily again.

"It's hard. I'm struggling," I finished.

"Nobody expects you to be okay. You can tell us how you really feel," Yui supplied.

"I want to talk to my sister about it. It's what I would always do. I can't have that. You both, as great as you are, you're no substitute."

"Komachi was special…" Yui agreed.

"I agree," Yukinoshita chimed.

"It's not both of your fault," I followed up quickly.

"We know." Yukinoshita agreed. She sounded totally earnest. All I could do was take her at her word. Just as before. It was still hard though.

"We really should all talk at some point," Yukinoshita kept up.

"Aren't we?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes. "You knew what I meant."

"I want you both to meet my parents…" Yui informed Yukinoshita. She already told me.

"Hm," Yukinoshita thought for a moment before she nodded once more.

"What's the point if I just jump off a bridge on the last day of school?" I wondered.

"Because you will do no such thing. Think about how bad that would hurt us," Yukinoshita cut crisply. I flinched but only slightly. I turned the motion into a shrug.

"I still want you to meet them. Don't you want to?" Yui demanded of me.

"I suppose… I do…" I stammered once more. I was a little on the defensive. Still how long was I supposed to bottle this shit up.

"I do too." Yukinoshita sliced. "It's settled then."

"What?! Fine." I agreed.

"But we should still all talk. About what our future looks like."

"Do we have a future?" I asked genuinely curious.

"That's a little up to you. Isn't it?" Yukinoshita hammered me. I raised my hands in surrender.

"I meant the three of us," I elaborated. "What would that look like?"

"Well you're pretty independent. As am I. My family can rot. Although you've already met my mother. My father won't approve at first but he'll come around if I'm happy. It's my mother that's the issue. I don't know how she'll take it. Her or my sister both."

"Okay…" I hedged. "I can see that."

"My parents will just be happy for me. That's all. They'll be confused but they'll get it and allow it," Yui elucidated.

"They sound nice," Yukinoshita informed her.

"They are. They're gentle spirits."

"My parents will be amazed I got this far," I muttered.

"With two girls?" Yui asked.

"Just in general," I elaborated.

"That's not funny." Yukinoshita decided.

"It's a little funny," I returned.

Yui started pouring chocolate into a wide pan.

"So your mother," I started addressing Yukinoshita. "She probably won't go for this type of thing."

"But it's what I want. I want it," she leveled back.

"Right. But doesn't she pay for all this?" I gestured with a vague hand at the room.

"It's mostly my father. And if I'm happy he'll be happy for me."

"Right… but still," Yui chorused my worries.

"My mother will see reason. I can make her."

"This whole thing is unreasonable," I pointed out.

"Yeah but it's good," Yui shot back.

"Maybe. Jury's out on whether or not this is good for me," I leveled right back.

"We're off topic. I can make my mother understand. I think."

"You think. And if you can't? What happens then?"

"I'm not sure. I'll make sure you don't have to deal with it. Now that I'm eighteen I can do whatever I want."

"Your problems are our problems Yukinon," Yui declared. "We won't abandon you to your family."

"You won't, maybe," Yukinoshita agreed half heartedly with a glare sent in my direction.

"You know I won't either. I want to see you happy and safe," I whispered. It was quiet. So quiet I wasn't sure she heard me. She did though and she nodded. It was enough.

"You already have an income," Yukinoshita pointed out.

"It's not enough to live off. But it helps with little things. I'll be able to do better if I can keep going with it," I agreed.

"Will you go to college?" Yui asked me.

"Not sure. I pretty much know all the undergraduate math they teach. I'm already doing some graduate stuff. Maybe if they allow me into super kamiokande. The neutrino laboratory here in Japan. It's about the only place I can see myself working long term."

"Good. Do you need a degree for that?" Yukinoshita demanded.

"Maybe. Depends on if I can show off what I can do. I've already started a little but I have so much more. I have thought experiments into high and low temperature physics. I think I can maybe use one to disprove the existence of super heavy elements or room temperature superconductors."

"You can do that?" Yui asked incredulously.

"Maybe. I'm all self taught. There could be some huge piece I'm missing but I think I can. Along with maybe a fourth law of thermodynamics which springs from one of those thought experiments and some other stuff I've been working on."

"Really?" Yui kept up.

"Maybe. I'm good but I'm beatable." I shrugged.

"Not to be rude but how much could you make off that?" Yukinoshita wondered.

"A better than decent living. An extravagant living. Especially if I'm working on top of all that."

"And if I get a job and Yui gets a job that's all not bad," Yukinoshita evaluated.

"Yep. And I can't really get into it but if some of the math stuff I'm working on pans out we'll be millionaires by the American dollar. Some math problems have bounties out on them in the millions so if I can figure some of that stuff out we won't have to work."

"Really? You can do that? Those exist?" Yui pressed.

"Yes those problems exist and I have ideas for three of them. I don't know if they will work but I have ideas." I shrugged again.

Yukinoshita set a timer and threw the pan in the oven gently. "Which three?"

"The Riemann Zeta Hypothesis, Yang Mills Mass Gap, and Navier Stokes Existence and Smoothness," I answered. "They're three of the big seven. Only one of the big seven has been solved. It was when we were children. The Poincare conjecture. None of them are simple problems to even describe. But I have no ideas for the other three. Birch-Dryer, Hodge, and P vs NP. I wouldn't even know where to start."

"I've never heard of those…" Yukinoshita trailed.

"I'd be surprised if you had. Except maybe Riemann Zeta. Perhaps you've heard the famous result that under some interpretations of infinite sums it makes sense to say the sun of every positive integer is negative one twelve."

"I hadn't…"

"It's Ramanujan and Hardy," I shrugged for a third time.

"That makes no sense. Shouldn't it be positive infinity?" Yui asked me.

"It is. If you're ever asked what is the sum of every positive integer and you say something other than positive infinity you'll be wrong. But in this one particular context with the right analytic continuation you get that result."

"Oh. Weird."

"Very."

"Sounds lovely," Yukinoshita informed us.

"What does?" I blinked at her.

"Our future," she answered immediately.

"I don't have a future. Every day I wake up wishing I was dead."

"Think about the bonuses of living," Yui pleaded. "Think about us. Your sister wouldn't want you to kill yourself."

"No I suppose not," I agreed halfheartedly.

"You need to mean it," Yukinoshita demanded.

"Fuck me sideways. What do you want from me? I'm miserable."

"I want you to want me bad enough to want to live," she spoke with some venom. "I want you to want us both that bad."

"No bullshit?" I asked.

"No bullshit," she agreed.

"I don't and I don't know if I ever will. Come to terms with that."

"I'm not the one with an issue."

"I'm going to make this your problem."

"Suicide doesn't take the pain away. It just passes it along," Yui cut in.

"Tag you're it," I shot back.

"Really? You'd do that to me anyway?" Yui whispered.

"Fuck. Fuck! I don't know. I don't know what I want. I do seem to want to be healthy. But at the same time how am I supposed to live without her? My whole life I lived in part for her. Now she's gone. And I have nothing."

"You have us. If you want," Yui suggested.

"You both are fantastic. I don't deserve to pray for you. But still… I once asked you, Yukinoshita, if you could live as long as you wanted how long should one choose to live. You told me that with you, Yui, and Komachi I should choose to live as long as possible. Now I don't have her. I want to go be with her. Whatever death really is, it can't be worse than this."

"It's not you, it's me?" She demanded harshly.

"A little. You're not a good substitute for my little sister. I loved her when I learned to love you."

"Really? You love me?"

"I think so…" I stammered. I went and ran my mouth. "I could be wrong but I think I do."

"What about me?" Yui asked pleasantly.

"I think I loved you before I loved Yukinoshita," I clarified.

"Say it again." Yui pleaded.

"What?" I wondered.

"Say you love me again."

"I love you?" I wondered.

"Say it like you mean it," Yui pleaded again.

"I love you," I affirmed.

"Hm," Yui hummed, a rich noise from her throat again.

"Are words of affirmation your love language?" Yukinoshita asked her. "What if I told you I love you too?"

"Oh please," Yui begged. "I'm not sure but I'd really like to hear that," she happily chirped.

"I love you, Yui." Yukinoshita informed her levely.

"Oh Yukinon!" Yui threw her arms around Yukinoshita's shoulders and kissed her cheek. I watched in a kind of sick fascination as Yukinoshita leaned into the kiss. She grinned at Yui. Yui was positively beaming. The timer went off and Yukinoshita turned away from Yui.

"You two are such Bambi lesbians," I muttered.

"What's that mean?" Yukinoshita asked me.

"N-no. It's like an actual term for lesbians who are more into cuddles and kisses instead of sex."

"I don't know about that," Yukinoshita breathed with a hungry look in her eye which shut me the fuck up.

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-WG